Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZTRAVEL...nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people. Show The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he
goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land (and work) again after a cheerful, careless voyage. It liberates the
vandal to travel--you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction.
I am technically "boss" of the family which I am carrying along--but I am grateful to know that it is only technically -- that the real authority rests on the other side of the house. It is placed there by a beneficent Providence, who foresaw before I was born, or, if he did not, he has found it out since -- that I am not in any way qualified to travel alone. Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links | Search In 1866 and 1867, Mark Twain wrote a number of letters to the San Francisco newspaper Alta California, detailing his travels from California to New York, by way of Nicaragua. In 1940 they were collected and published under the title Mark Twain’s Travels with Mr. Brown. In one of those letters, a dispatch from New York dated May 18, 1867, we find what has become one of his more famous quotations on travel:
In context, Twain is describing “The Traveller’s Club”:
Subsequent letters to Alta California didn’t need to wait so long to be put into book form. Published in 1869, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress, chronicles his trip to Europe and the Holy Land and became a classic in travel literature. Volume two of the book contains an even more popular (in my estimation) travel quotation, in the form of
The full paragraph is as follows:
Twain’s view sounds right, but don’t take my word for it, just ask SCIENCE. As reported in PsyPost, researcher Jiyin Cao says that he and his colleagues were “intrigued” by Twain’s quotation, so they conducted five studies to test the idea. The results suggest that Twain knew what he was talking about:
Earlier in The Innocents Abroad, Twain has more to say about the benefits of travel: self awareness. (This one I don’t see quoted much.)
And then there’s the well known
Yes, Twain had a lot of things to say about travel . . . but this last quotation isn’t one of them. Despite many online and offline sources attributing it to Twain, Quote Investigator‘s Garson O’Toole finds it no earlier than in 1990, when H. Jackson Brown, Jr. included it in his book P. S. I Love You. The inspirational author credits the saying to his mother, Sarah Frances Brown. And as long as we’re trekking down this path, so to speak, Twain also didn’t say, “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” (I know, this is stretching the travel theme a bit, but the word is in there.) Back to O’Toole: He writes that Bonnie Taylor-Blake located the phrase “falsehood will fly from Maine to Georgia, while truth is pulling her boots on” in an 1820 issue of the Portland Gazette. And then in 1821, William Tudor, in The North American Review, ascribed “a Lie would travel from Maine to Georgia while Truth was getting on his boots” to congressman Fisher Ames. In Twain’s writings, though, nothing similar appears. Bummer! Mark Twain didn’t say everything. But now I’ll leave this discussion on a more positive note—positive because here’s something that did come from Twain, and positive because it recognizes another beneficial aspect of getting out and about. With Huckleberry Finn as his spokesperson (a passenger, by the way, in a boat held aloft by a balloon, floating around the world), Twain wrote the following in 1894:
Yes, Huck, you said it. You sure did. And I figger we don’t need no research to know that it’s true. (Mark Twain, “Letter 18,” Alta California, June 23, 1867; Twain, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress, American, 1869; Eric Dolan, “New Study Confirms Mark Twain’s Saying: Travel Is Fatal to Prejudice,” PsyPost, December 9, 2013; Garson O’Toole, “Twenty Years from Now You Will Be More Disappointed by the Things You Didn’t Do than by the Ones You Did Do,” Quote Investigator, September 29, 2011; O’Toole, “A Lie Can Travel Halfway around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes,” Quote Investigator, July 13, 2014; Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad, Charles L. Webster, 1894) [illustration: “USS Quaker City,” by Clary Ray, c. 1890, public domain] What is Mark Twain most famous quote?"Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.". "An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.". "When in doubt‚ tell the truth.". "If you tell truth you don't have to remember anything.". What are best quotes in Travel?“Travel is my therapy.” ... . “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ... . “Dare to live the life you've always wanted.” ... . “Adventures are the best way to learn.” ... . “I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.” ... . “Have stories to tell not stuff to show.”. What quote did Mark Twain say?"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't." "The funniest things are forbidden." "There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined." "When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain."
What is man Mark Twain's quote?Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.
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